Share this:

Like this:

Related

4 responses to “Update”

Your blog site has been both interesting and educational! Last August, King County held a community meeting for the Sunrise Heights and Westwood neighborhoods in West Seattle. They presented several solution options for Combined Sewer Overflows, but their clear preference was “Green Stormwater Infrastructure,” aka “GSI.” As you well know, this is nothing but a euphemism for open ditches. Despite all the concerns voiced in the August meeting, King County has selected GSI as their solution and is now marching toward implementation in 2013-2015. Last August, they touted your neighborhood’s project in glowing terms and showed us pictures of the construction in progress. They held another community meeting for us tonight and avoided mentioning your neighborhood at all. I brought it up and mentioned all the problems, which clearly embarrassed the King County project team. A representative from SPU quickly jumped up and said that they are “addressing” the problems in your neighborhood, but I’m not holding my breath for any of us. I dread having an open ditch/stagnant cesspool in my front yard, but it’s clearly being rammed down our throats in West Seattle, too, in spite of the local track record. Sigh.

Thanks for sharing, DRS, what is going on in Sunrise & Westwood.
From the KingCounty Wastewater website : “In the Barton basin, raingardens, plantings, and street trees in the City of Seattle-owned right-of-way will be designed to capture and reduce the amount of peak stormwater flows that would enter the combined sewer system by up to 15 million gallons a day.” OMG ! Ballard Pilot Project with its 93 cells has a stated goal of retaining 50,000 gallons. So your mess could be 300 times worse than ours ! ? !?!??!?!?! Good luck and stay in touch.

Unfortunately, the ground here in Sunrise Heights is composed of a thin layer of clay-heavy topsoil on top of clay hardpan so dense that a pick-axe will literally bounce back at you if you try to dig into it. In the event the ground does drain, then we’re concerned for our basements. We’re a hillside community of WWII-era and older homes with many of the lots sloping downward from the street to the house. Dumping a large volume of extra water into our front yards when it rains doesn’t bode well for basements that we have worked hard to dry out and keep dry. As a gardening enthusiast, I encourage the use of rain gardens, but they’re not appropriate for every location. The hazards and eyesores inflicted upon your neighborhood are certainly not rain gardens by any stretch of the definition. We still have two years before they begin construction in West Seattle, so I’ll be watching your saga with the city closely and cheering you on. I hope you can reach a satisfactory resolution soon.

Welcome

This site highlights the issues with the Ballard Roadside Raingardens Project, a.k.a. Ballard Raingardens.

Overview

This blog was started by residents affected by Ballard Roadside Raingardens project (Phase I) and now serves as a community information resource.

In Summer 2010, Seattle Public Utilities (SPU) began piloting Raingardens in the Ballard neighborhood (Seattle, WA) with the intention of expanding them to more locations in Ballard and the city. These Raingardens were a prototype with a new, atypical design: They were meant to hold large volumes of water and would not fully drain until after three rain-free days. For our experience, please see “Phase I Photos” and historical blog posts.

By Spring 2011, SPU decided to remove the Raingardens on 77th and 29th Avenues and eventually retro-fitted the Raingardens on 28th Avenue with under-drains.

Now SPU is moving to install Phase II, “Ballard Natural Drainage,” on blocks surrounding Loyal Heights Elementary school and Loyal Heights Community Center.

Location

Contact us

Posts

Comments

Comments pertaining to the Raingarden issues presented here are welcomed. The right to not approve comments that are disrespectful or impertinent to the issues is reserved.

To note:

For the purpose of remaining consistent with SPU’s project title, we refer to these installations as “Raingardens.” However, since true raingardens drain naturally within 24 hours, more accurate terms are “bio-retention ponds” or “detention ponds.”